


I made my wish upon a star

by Isaha



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy
Genre: Early days of the Alliance, Father-Daughter Relationship, Post-Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, Pre-Star Wars: A New Hope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-17
Updated: 2020-02-02
Packaged: 2021-02-07 22:37:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,327
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21465664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isaha/pseuds/Isaha
Summary: Welcoming Leia Skywalker into their life was, Bail and Breha Organa knew, a pure leap of faith; as much a source of pure elation as the beginning of a risky adventure. Padmé’s daughter would grow up safe and loved and protected from the unbearable grief that had eaten up her mother.But they would not let her truth remain hidden with the dead.(Or, how Leia was raised with the knowledge of her origins).
Relationships: Bail Organa & Ahsoka Tano, Bail Organa & Leia Organa, Bail Organa/Breha Organa, Padmé Amidala & Bail Organa
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

Night had fallen over Alderaan, coming up to the full moon of the eighth month.

In one of the most secluded room of their residence, Queen Breha and Senator Bail Organa have continued to talk until late in the evening.  
It was supposed to be another still night but the city was unusually busy. Walking to the edge of the veranda, Breha Organa peered out into the dark. Sounds could be heard in the distance, unrecognizable at first, then gradually distinguishing themselves into the beating of drums, people shouting, singing, and clapping their hands as the city centre became crowded.

“I’m afraid this will achieve nothing but draw the Emperor’s attention to us” she said calmly, turning to her husband. He looked exhausted, his face drawn and eyes puffy. The sight of their new baby, peacefully sleeping curled up on his chest, brought a loving smile on her lips.

“It’s bound to happen away, with my name so high up on the Petition of the Two Thousand,” Bail replied grimly. After all, Alderaan has always been an arena for political dissent despite its pacifist positions; already the planet had become home to many refugees and contestants who viewed it as one of the last bastions of freedom.

Freedom; what would be left of it now? Many of his fellow Senators were enthusiastic over the rise of such a strong leader who finally ended the war, but without balance on his power, Sheev Palpatine would probably control a great deal of their lives. They were under martial law already; it was to be feared that the people or their representatives would have little or no say over policy decisions and those speaking up in opposition would face subjugation. As for the Jedi... the cold, monstrous slaughter of the Jedi stabbed him day and night. For days now he’d been feeling too wrought up to think of lying down, and even when he managed to shut his emotions away and snatch a few hours of sleep before dawn, his slumber was light and fitful. After Padmé’s funeral, he’d longed to be alone with his wife to open his heart to her, to feel free to express the terrible tide of grief welling up through his veins and find comfort with her.

He had last seen Senator Mon Mothma on Naboo and the outcome of their conversation had seemed thin and disappointing. They’d already been warned that the Emperor demanded public assurances that they would never take up arms against him, and Mon along with a few others were expecting him to join in their attempts to mount an overt resistance movement while they still could.  
However Bail had other equally pressing concerns that he couldn’t voice. If he did not lie very low now after all that happened and if the secret of Leia’s custody and parentage ever came to light, how long would his family be allowed to live? He’d assured his colleague that they were united in their desire for Palpatine’s downfall, but he could offer her nothing much as the gap between desire and reality seemed insurmountable; they were both hopelessly weakened. His stomach curled with a sickly, hollow feeling.

As always, Breha seemed to read his thoughts. “We need to bide our time”, she said softly, “We risk everything by placing ourselves in Palpatine’s sights just now. He’ll certainly seize on any pretext of disloyalty to act. If we are going to live, we should show him greater allegiance than we ever have.”

Her husband slowly nodded his agreement, his face muscles clenched and head low as he wept silently. Breha felt her heart twist for him, for Leia’s parents, now lost to them, for their unravelling world that might never be restored and her own eyes grew hot. She came closer to him to gently stroke the back of his neck and touched his forehead with hers. They were silent for a moment, watching the baby sleep between them and listening to the voice of thousands of demonstrators streaming into the streets from the surrounding districts.

“This must never be allowed to pass away,” Bail whispered, his voice hoarse. “We must live—counter the Empire and defeat it before democracy and everything it stands for vanishes for good.” But he feared it already had.

“Then we should be prepared to bend, if we’re not to be broken completely,” Breha replied in her usual clear and calm tone.

She was right, as always, Bail realised. Palpatine was decidedly a more dangerous opponent than anyone had suspected, and both the Jedi and the Senate were to blame for not recognizing his true nature. If they were going to survive and live long enough to see the return to just government, they needed to be flexible and acquire other qualities: deviousness, discernment and above all patience. He might allay the Emperor’s suspicions against them, but how would they make use of this? Could any revolt succeed while Palpatine lived?

As if sensing his dread, two-weeks-old little Leia gave a deep sigh in her sleep, clenching and unclenching her well-formed little fingers. She half-opened her unfocussed baby eyes for a second and drifted back to her dreams. Bail hugged the newborn child to him and a look of affection and sadness passed between his wife and him. Leia Skywalker had lost her father and mother, and her twin brother had been taken away; she deserved all the love they could give to a child.

“What will we do if she turns out to be born Force sensitive?” Breha whispered. That was a rhetorical question of course. She had never met Anakin Skywalker but she knew the man the Holonet portrayed him to be – the Clone War’s Hero; the Jedi’s Chosen One.

“Chances are high that she is, or will be, powerful in the Force like her father,” he replied just as quietly. They both knew that even if she chose not to follow in her birth mother and Bail’s footsteps, their little girl would grow up in the public eye and especially the Empire’s. Although Master Yoda had refused to give the twins a Jedi training, Palpatine would sooner or later recognise in Leia the offspring of his apprentice if they failed to conceal her radiance in the Force.

“She’ll probably need guidance one day or another, and I think I know just the perfect candidate for this,” Bail added, the side of his mouth quirking upwards. His eyeballs itched and his head felt almost unbearably heavy when he thought about the many difficulties and obstacles of an alliance against the Empire and the need for years of careful diplomacy until some opportunity presented itself; but the thought of a certain spirited Togruta woman with tawny skin and blue eyes heartened him and helped lighten his grief.

Breha wrapped an arm around her husband’s waist, their eyes locked onto their tiny, precious bundle of life.

In time, Leia Organa might well become their new hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is my first venture into this beloved saga I've grown up with. I hope you will be kind! This fic was born from the fact that I could never buy the idea that Bail denied Leia the truth for nearly twenty years. It would only erode her trust in him, and I can't imagine him completely hiding something that strikes such a sensitive chord with him. Leia would just *know* there's something fishy going on lol. Actually, thinking that young children are gullible and mindless really can do harm and I don't want the Organas to fall into that trap.  
In canon Leia remembers flashes of Padmé, and I wouldn't put it past her to investigate that woman ;) I like to think that she knew about her real mother, which would be another reason for her to commit herself to the Alliance and the New Republic. Of course the only thing she couldn't figure out on her own is who her father was...
> 
> I'm a little nervous, so please leave a comment if you liked this, thanks! :-)


	2. Chapter 2

A dark time had begun, and the next three years brought their share of challenges.

Regional governors had been appointed over every star system that wasn’t an Outer Rim territory. They were intended to make their planets safer by coordinating planetary military forces, the Emperor had said, but Bail suspected they were assigned the task of keeping potentially dissident Senators under close watch, even though their actual power had dwindled drastically. Still, the Emperor’s approval rating reached sky-high levels.

Ever since, Bail had been forced to play a careful game in the galactic capital as well as on his homeworld. He’d had to meet endless groups of people, explain the terms of the incorporation in the Empire as best as he could, forcing himself to remain as unmoved by their anger and incomprehension as by their despair. _Deviousness_, Breha reminded him when he found it hard to act calmly. He would appear as innocuous and blameless as possible, and give no one any excuse to kill him or usurp him.

This precarious situation was setting even more obstacles to his plans; for several months Bail had been painstakingly building up an underground network of informants to see what alliances could be made with other resistance movements. He needed to work with slow, intelligent patience towards his goal, hoping that some move would break the tightening noose and reverse the situation.

Despite these difficult times, watching their daughter grow up was one of the rare aspects of their life that Breha and Bail truly relished in.

By thirty-two months of age, Leia was proving to be a lively and quick-witted child, erasing her parents’ fears concerning the consequences of the traumatic losses of her life. Her eyes were always watchful of everything happening around her and both Bail and Breha nurtured and gently encouraged her innocent curiosity about the world.

Their little girl may still be young now, a little under three, but already she was starting to realise that there was an oddity in their family and started asking many questions about her missing birth parents. Why was her skin colour different than Papa and Mum’s? What did ‘birth parents’ mean? Why didn’t they keep her with them? Didn't they like her? Was it her fault? Where were they now anyway?

In a situation like this, most would have lied. After all, what child would want to know that her father had caused his own wife’s death, unrepentantly betrayed her beliefs and those of his comrades, comrades he’d killed by the dozen?

But Bail and Breha could not lie. At a very early age they started to tell her about ‘the day Papa brought her home’ and ‘when she came into their lives’, so Leia would grow up knowing the truth. They thought that nothing was worse than living in a lie, even by omission, and that it would be so much harder for Leia to accept the situation serenely if she’d believed in a lie for years and felt too awkward to ask about what was left unsaid. Children, for some reason, _did_ have that strange ability to intuit everything their family members tried not to tell them, and mutism always tended to cause them a certain amount of dull anxiety.

So they proceeded to tell their child more about her birth parents—to a certain extent at least. Bail and Breha eventually brought up the subject during her bedtime story, when all three of them were cuddled up under the duvet. With kind and simple words, they told her the story so she could make it her own.

Breha explained that she could not have babies, so both Papa and Mum had been very much looking forward to meeting her. Leia was born from another mum’s womb, but they loved her just as much as if she’d been born to Mum. Her birth mum had given her her name; she had loved Leia very much but she could not take care of her...

To their relief, their daughter had appeared satisfied with the brief information that they had imparted to her. At least for now. It was still a lot to take in for a small child.

Bail gently stroked her baby-soft hair. “You did nothing wrong, sweetheart. There are things that you cannot understand today because you’re too young, but you will understand later. We will talk about this again.”

***

It took almost two years altogether to track down former Jedi Padawan Ahsoka Tano.

In fact she’d been the one to approach him, proving beyond doubt that she wasn't one to be found if she did not want to be. Returning to the Core Worlds was an entirely daring move in itself, and both she and Bail were trembling with emotion when she met him on Alderaan, several months after their first contact.

He tried to ask her what she had been doing, to make up for lost time, but she’d gently deterred him from inquiring too much, her lips curled in excuse. “The less you know about me, the safer you will be, Bail. I’m sorry.”

He understood her meaning of course. The conversation moved on to the funding of his secret movement, the recruitment of operatives in the intelligence network, and how each cell member would communicate with his or her senior in the hierarchy.

There was much to discuss, and the night was falling when the sound of little feet pitter-pattering across the floor resounded in the office. Dressed in pyjamas, holding what looked like a Utapaun varactyl plush toy against her, four-year-old little Leia stared unabashedly at the Togruta female and crept nearer when her father beckoned to her.

The little girl fidgeted. “Mum told me to come and say goodnight.”

Bail scooped her up in his arms with a loving smile. “Of course, sweetheart. I’m sorry I wasn’t here for your bedtime story. I haven't talked to my friend Ah--Fulcrum here for a long time.”

“Hello,” Leia addressed the tall woman who inclined her head with a soft greeting.

Her father kissed her hair and set her down. The child bade them both good night and dutifully returned to her bedroom while Ahsoka’s intense eyes followed her. “She’s your daughter?” she asked in confusion once Leia was out of the room. “I thought Breha and you couldn’t—“

“She’s not ours”, Bail cut in. He leaned forward and whispered into her ear what no one knew besides him and his wife, and two Jedi masters. Leia was no mere war orphan; she was Padmé Naberrie and Anakin Skywalker’s secret daughter, and Breha and he were assuming custody of the little girl after the passing of her mother.

The news hit Ahsoka like a physical blow. She stared at him, hardly able to speak, and he saw the mixture of shock, love and sorrow on her face. She’d endured a lot in the past several years, Bail knew; her departure from the Jedi Order had left a gap in her life that would never be filled. When she could no longer keep the tears at bay, the only comfort he could offer his friend was his arm on her shaking shoulders, holding her closely without speaking. Time had eased his own grief and he briefly wondered if she’d ever taken the time to grieve for her losses; the hardest of deaths to mourn, distant and unseen.  
But they would not despair yet; as her tears dried, sadness seemed to give way to determination once more. Bail had not said a word about little Luke or Anakin’s corruption, but if she noticed he’d left things out, she understood it was not her business to know and didn’t enquire further. He didn’t need to ask her to never utter a word of this to anybody, for she knew the need for secrecy better than anyone now that their lives depended on it.

Ahsoka took a deep breath to compose herself and murmured an apology. “So, you, Bail and Breha Organa, are hiding the daughter of the most stubborn couple of opponents of the Empire, right under the Sith Lords’ nose,” she laughed weakly.

A wan, fleeting smile crossed Bail’s lips at the unwitting irony of her words. She had no idea that one of these ‘opponents’ had become the towering, startling masked figure in black that served as Palpatine’s enforcer, and he prayed that she would be spared the sorrow of learning that terrible truth.

After a moment he replied, “As the saying goes, when your enemy assumes you keep a secret in an elaborate hiding place, the clever thing to do is to hide it in plain sight.”

They shared a look in silence. Neither of them was under any illusions; dozens of Bail’s peers had already been arrested on charges of conspiracy and treason. As one of the founding members of the Delegation of the Two Thousand, there was little doubt that Bail had already drawn the attention of the Emperor on Alderaan. If it was ever known that Padmé’s child hadn’t died with her… or worse, if Leia was to display any apparent sign of Force talents… Ahsoka swallowed, her heart sinking.

The philosophy upon which the Jedi stood, their pledge to protect the citizens and inhabitants of the Republic, their core teachings to live their lives as humble defenders of justice were being wiped out of collective memory, replaced by the idea that they were haughty sectarians following a narrow-minded and reactionary religion. For years now Darth Vader had been thoroughly hunting down any surviving Jedi Master, Knight, Padawan or Initiate unlucky enough to fall into his clutches; she’d witnessed firsthand how Force-sensitives throughout the galaxy had become prey to the Sith. Anakin’s daughter would be sought out by the Empire, abducted and turned into a pawn in the hands of the dark side… _No_. The idea was intolerable.

Bail broke the silence. “How do you know if someone is Force-sensitive, besides blood testing? Is there… I don’t know, something that another Force-user might detect?” Something the _Sith_ might detect was implied, and Ahsoka grasped his meaning instantly.

“It is possible to sense high levels of the Force in individuals, but never in untrained Force-sensitives,” she reassured him. “She was there in the room with us and her presence in the Force has eluded me.”

Silence fell on the room for a few moments. Her host seemed wrapped in thoughts, a deep frown between his eyes. “_Did_ she manifest any Force skills already?” Ahsoka said, surprised by his lack of reaction.

He raised a hand to his temple and rubbed it with his fingertips. “Perhaps. Sometimes she talks about—” Bail broke off before mentioning harsh deserts and binary suns. “She describes a place she’s never been to... Some place off-world.”

She heard the worry in his voice and her heart ached. If the Order still existed, Anakin’s child would soon step into the Jedi world. Years would lie ahead of her, disciplining her body, stretching and steadying her mind, learning to quieten herself so as to welcome and heed the whispers of the Force within her. Ahsoka felt a stab of regret. Very few of them had survived the Purges and no one could risk helping Leia hone her dormant potential now.

“She should be safe, for as long as she’s not trained in the ways of the Force”, she whispered. But even as she spoke, the cold touch of premonition brushed against her spine.  
“I’d like to give her the same mental exercises I’ll be giving our own recruits, if you allow me,” Ahsoka went on after a moment’s thought, “If Leia is to pick up our torch someday and join in our fight, she needs to learn how to resist mental probes... As you do. With so much at stake, we cannot risk anyone prying any information out of your thoughts.”

***

Five days later, Bail was escorting Ahsoka to where she’d hidden her A-wing starfighter, a disused landing platform of a remote section of the palace.

The Togruta woman had bidden farewell to Breha and especially little Leia with ill-disguised emotion. As much as she would’ve liked to enjoy a bit more than a glimpse into their lives, staying on Alderaan for much longer would definitely be unwise. Although Ahsoka made sure to be called by her code name and not to be seen in public, her continued presence in the Organas’ home may end up arousing suspicion, so they’d needed to settle their affairs over the span of a few days.

Breha’s small smile and compassionate touch on her arm on the morning following Bail’s revelation had comforted her but it’d been a trying task, to look at the little girl and not see her late master in her impish grins, the glint in her eye or her somewhat foolhardy but kind nature.  
Growing up amongst sometimes very young Initiates at the Temple had made Ahsoka thankfully comfortable with children, and Leia had taken an instant liking to her father’s friend, singing nursery rhymes to her, pestering her for games of hide-and-seek or stories about planets she’s been to.

On the times she wasn’t in school and with her parents’ permission, the former Jedi tested the girl’s aptitude for the Force, teaching her the rudiments of mindfulness meditation the way she’d been taught herself – a lifetime ago, it seemed.

In the years to come, she would continue to guide Leia to build shields on her conscience that would rise instinctively and not by her conscious will. They would work at making her mind appear as slippery as oil on water until it was barricaded behind a serene, fathomless pool of calm with barely a ripple to mar its surface. Ahsoka was careful not to awake deeper abilities or make Leia’s presence noticeable in the Force, but over time, she had no doubt that her pupil could one day excel just as well as her father did.

But all that lay in the future. Until the time was right, she and Bail would follow through with their gamble.

“Tell me we’ll meet again,” Bail said as they stepped onto the docking bay. Death came suddenly, they knew, and life was fragile and brief.

“We’ll see each other again, I promise.” Ahsoka spoke gently. There was a gleam of sadness in her eyes, but her smile was genuine and warm. “Take good care of yourselves.”

She was climbing into her starfighter’s cockpit when Bail called her real name, and his serious tone made her turn to him. His eyes twinkled, “May the Force be with you.”

Fulcrum snorted a laugh, nodded twice with a crooked smile before boarding her ship and blasting away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that's it for now. Hope you liked the chapter! On a side note, even though I chose not to elaborate on it, I wanted to make clear that I disagree with all the people giving the Jedi shit for supposedly brainwashing children into suppressing emotion or affection, when the films are in fact full of examples of Jedi caring for others and one another. I really recommand reading gffa's Closer look at the Jedi Order in SW Canon (here on ao3)!
> 
> I would love to know your thoughts on the story, so please drop me a review if you have a moment :)


	3. Chapter 3

Another two years passed, and by then Leia was six years old.

Raising a child meant a lot of struggling to juggle long working hours with family, Bail learned. But it made him embrace life more wholeheartedly and he never felt happier than when his wife and daughter were close to him, even though these days it tended to be rare for them to be together. During the first years of Leia’s life, he’d stayed on planet as much as he could; public affairs kept him and Breha busy most of the day but they always tried to make time in their schedule to be with their little girl. They relished in every song she hummed, every make-believe play, coped with the occasional sulking or crabby mood, read storybooks out to her and listened as her gibberish language turned into more complex sentences. 

Now however, Leia’s education, her parents’ need to give equal attention to the entire Alderaan sector meant constant travel and frequent separations. Carefully and methodically Breha and Bail were building up a network of support within their sector and he now travelled a great deal, from one side of the Galaxy to the other. Bail only handled off-planet affairs but the task was consuming much of his energy and time, as there were pockets of resistance to the Empire that worked independently and he and Ahsoka meant to bring them together and get them to unify their efforts. Even though his credibility had initially been weakened because of his seeming imperturbability to the Emperor’s schemes, Bail had deep sympathy for those who spoke against the new system, and gradually most Alderaanians had learned to recognize which was his real self and which was a role he assumed. For years he'd been leading two different lives, a game of deception and maintaining pretences he knew he played with flair and skill now.

His wife clearly wasn’t lagging behind either. For her part, Queen Breha had and still refused to issue restrictions on protest marches, quarrelled with the Imperial governor over his decrees that levied refugees seeking to travel to the Alderaan system, and generally worked at making their planet a safe place for all, especially those seeking sanctuary. That included striving toward the successful inclusion of children displaced by the war, as hundreds of schools aimed at creating a climate in which newcomers of all species felt welcome and valued.

All host children were encouraged to put in for the honour of being a ‘twin’ and get involved in helping refugee children to fit in. The arrival of new young people consequently enabled children of all ages to learn about empathy, respect and community spirit befitting Alderaanian ideals. Leia, as a war orphan herself – for all she knew – felt entrusted with a mission; she took these ‘responsibilities’ very seriously and participated in helping pupils her age to familiarise with the language, the layout of the school, rules, expectations and routines. Some of them became close friends to little Leia; every once in a while Breha would check up on them and find the small herd of kids at the crater lake, sitting on the floating gangway with their legs dangling over the water, talking about the things children talk about. 

As the months went by, most of refugee youngsters were settling in well and thriving again. In turn, thanks to them Alderaanian children discovered different foreign languages and gained a better understanding of world events; in the years following, Leia would come to appreciate the subtle throaty sounds of Ubese, the melody of the Zabrak language, and beyond that, learn that exile was not always an option for everyone seeking to flee their war-torn homeworlds. At that time, Empire troops, led by the infamous Lord Vader, had increased their campaigns in many outlying regions and images of the Imperial ‘pacification’ of the Outer Rim were flooding Holonet screens. Everybody in Leia’s school playground talked about the giant nightmarish robot with a skull-like mask and jet black armor, and the fireworks they saw on the news.

Even though they wished Leia would grow up in more peaceful times, Breha and Bail had resigned themselves to the idea that trying to hide their little girl from the world was pointless. The world always called at the door and would never leave them alone. Children her age should only be scared of the dark or scary monsters under their beds, and yet little Leia had started asking her parents some of those existential questions kids often wonder about – why is there war? What happens when you die? – and worried when her father left for several days.  
Bail did his best to assuage her fears. He promised that he was in good health and very careful, but silenced the fact that in this world where the Emperor’s word was law, any dissident was at risk of being either assassinated in secret or executed publicly. 

As Breha and Bail always nurtured and gently encouraged the child’s innocent inquisitiveness, bit by bit they were instilling new information about her past at her request. When they talked about these things it was very quietly, even when they were confident that they were beyond the reach of eavesdropping devices. Her guileless questions mostly came out of the blue, like that evening when she was in the garden with Bail, watching shooting stars high above and Leia asked why her birth mother died. 

He gently pulled her onto his lap. Leia needed reassurance and often broached the subject of death, even though she was having trouble taking in the finality of it, and whatever his personal feelings he knew he needed to answer his daughter truthfully, with words appropriate for her age. “I don’t have all the answers, sweetheart. There are things no one can control, and death is one of these things.”  
Bail did not try to hide the sadness and affection behind his words, “I knew your birth mother. She died very young, and what happened to her is the opposite of what normally happens. Most people live long lives, you know, and they die when they are very old.”

Leia straightened up to search his face with rapt attention, “She was friends with you Papa?”

He nodded. “I met her at my work, and we became closer because we both tried to make the world a better place. We didn’t want anybody to fight because wars only create misery and force people to leave their homes. We wanted to find solutions so that everybody could live in peace.”

“I’d like to do that too”, the little girl pouted her lips. “I don’t like it when people are sad.” 

“You can do it at your own level, sweetheart. Think about it: what would you do if you saw your classmates making fun of another child at school? Would you act as if nothing had happened, or tell them it’s bad to laugh at somebody?” 

“I would tell them it’s not nice,” Leia replied slowly, scrunching her forehead. “And ask the boy or the girl to play with me.”

“That's the spirit,” Bail nodded, smiling. “I’m proud of you, sweetheart. You see, helping people and the world around us is not easy because it’s always easier to fight than talk, but it’s important to search for solutions. Your birth mother understood that too and she refused to be silenced.”

“I wish I knew what she looked like”, she sighed, making Bail hold her tightly. His little girl was growing up with each passing day, her childhood chubbiness slowly melting away; her eyes were soft while Padmé’s had been hard in her final years, but he saw his friend in her coloration, the shape of her mouth and the curve of her cheekbones. 

“She’d be proud of you too darling.” Bail stood Leia on her feet when Breha called to her from inside. “Now to bed with you, thinker of deep thoughts!” 

***  
It took him the better part of two nights to unearth his old files after discussing it with Breha, but Bail finally relocated the worn-looking photograph he was looking for. It displayed the members of the Loyalist Committee at the time of the outbreak of the Clone Wars, and a familiar tinge of sadness settled in his heart as his eyes fell on his late colleague.

“You look funny, Papa”, Leia giggled the next morning when she spotted him in the front row, standing beside a corpulent blue Twi’lek, a blond human woman, and… “Here she is”, he whispered, pointing at a smiling woman dressed in an elegant floor-length purple gown. “Padmé.”

For a long moment the little girl sat solemn-eyed and silent, taking in the woman’s—her birth mother— shadowy hair just like hers, her straight back and serene beauty, her shrewd but kind eyes. At that moment, somehow, Leia felt that she had grown up knowing this face, more clearly than should have been possible; yet she had forgotten how she remembered her.

“Why is she sad, Papa?” Leia murmured.

Bail glanced again at the picture. Padmé’s smile was tired but true and didn’t give off a sense of sadness. Where did she get that feeling from? 

“She doesn’t look sad sweetheart”, he said slowly, “but it’s true that a short time before you were born, your mother was upset because people she trusted did things that weren’t right.”

Leia frowned, “they did not apologise?”

Bail smiled kindly at her childish naiveté. "There are some things that you cannot apologise for.”

They were silent for a good minute and then he went on gently, “I can only imagine what you’re feeling about all this Leia. There is nothing you cannot tell me. Do you want to talk about it?”

As if his question unleashed something within her, she dissolved into tears. “I don’t know”, she gulped, “I just feel sad.”

“Sad feelings are normal”, Bail spoke as he held her close, swaying slowly. “And it’s never pointless to express them. They fade in time, but the people who died still live in our minds and in our hearts. In a way,” he made an effort to speak lightly and dropped a kiss on the top of her head, “it’s like they never died.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thoughts and comments are very appreciated (: more SW stuff will come!


End file.
